Haiku
by Ibe Ware Desu, LC
Outside the window,
the Milky Way stars reach to
the next galaxy.
Ibe Ware Desu, LC (Lieutenant Commander), is a poet of Japan. Here he is thinking of a Shiki haiku.
~~~
The Portal
by Slider Cubeawe
He flutter kicks along the long length of the swimming pool;
he plows right through the water, it’s refreshing, splashing, cool.
His abs are tightening; he’s drooling just a little bit;
his arms propel him forward, as his heels rise and dip.
His feet go back and forth, his thighs approach his abs, o, wow!
like as he’s shoving off to points beyond the here and now.
It is as if he’s been transported to another world;
into another realm it seems his body has been hurled.
His legs flip up, his legs drop down, he’s in a worm hole’s chute.
Submerged, he reemerges to fresh air. O, what a beaut!
Slider Cubeawe is a poet of alternate universes. He thinks the space he is in is filled with cubes, and he is in one of those cubes now. He sees cubes in front of him, behind him, above him, below him, and to the left and right of him. He realizes that this tesselation of 3D space, however, is only one of among an infinity of spaces. Swiss mathematican Ludwig Schläfli (1814-1895) was one of the key figures in the development of higher dimensional spaces. His favourite puzzles of the moment are sudokus, which he likes to do when he is on a jet plane or in the back yard with his cat.
~~~
On the Einstein-Rosen Bridge
by I. E. Sbace Weruld
Each tried to keep his balance on the Einstein-Rosen Bridge,
each hoping for a place to pause, a momentary ridge.
But in that turning tunnel, like a funnel in the wind,
they could not help but twist and gyrate, pirouette and spin.
They tried to keep together, but the force pushed them apart.
They tried to hold each other up, but then fell off the chart.
First, Slider Cubeawe was stretched out, as far as he could go;
then “Weird” Ace Blues reached to the limit of what he could know;
and Cal Wes Ubideer came to his ultimate extreme;
three musketeers all falling in through space-time in a dream.
I. E. Sbace Weruld is a poet of the continually astounding elements of science. The Chandrayaan mooncraft launched this week, and is heading for the far side of the moon.
~~~
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
The cat grabs the mouse:
squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak-squeak.
It’s his little toy.
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
The weed whacker hits
the grasses by the wood fence.
The frog jumps away.
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
Beneath the cat palm,
to taste a frond, cat paws reach:
vomit on the carpet.
“Wired Clues” Abe is a poet of Japanese forms with an English mind-set.
~~~
The Loiterers
by Eric Awl De Beus
In Wellington, New Zealand, two blue penguins have been nabbed
in their pursuit of searching for a “natch’ral” habitat.
O, they weren’t grabbed, no, but with salmon, they were lured away
from sushi stall at busy station at the break of day.
Each waddling bird was guided to a cardboard carry box,
and later were returned back to the water past the docks.
Kororā, noted for their bluish colour and small size,
are an endangered species, but remain quite happy guys.
The loiterers were booked and carried off by the police;
the city could breathe easier; they had restored the peace.
Eric Awl De Beus is a poet of New Zealand.
~~~
The Silver-Crested Cockatoos
by E. Birdcaws Eule
“the green freedom of a cockatoo”
—Wallace Stevens, “Sunday Morning”
The silver-crested cockatoos on telephonic lines,
swing back and forth, and sometimes flip around and round two times.
They chew on outdoor furniture, and door and window frames,
attacking anything in site that fits within their aims,
like solar water-heaters, television antennae,
no satellite dish is protected from their vileness.
They’ll strip the silicon sealant from plate-glass window panes,
attacking even the electric cabling tarpaulins.
They are destructive creatures, and their squawk is loud and irks.
No Sunday morning in Connecticut can catch these jerks.
E. Birdcaws Eule is a poet of birds. According to Birdee Euclaws, “Cockatoos like tearing up things: newspapers, poetry books, and the wooden tables they lie on.”
~~~
Jakarta’s Sinking
by Budi Eas Celewr
It sits on swampy lands with thirteen rivers running through,
the capital and largest site in Indonesia too,
Jakarta has its share of problems that it has to face,
and more than most because it’s a large populated place.
Its rapid urban growth puts it just after Tokyo,
as the Earth’s second most agglomerated imbroglio.
With grid-locked traffic and conjestion it is hard to drive;
as well, its ecologic breakdown means that plants can’t thrive.
But worst of all, the city’s sinking lower all the time;
too much ground water’s pumped, and floods rise due to changing clime.
Budi Eas Celewr is a poet of Indonesia. Jakarta is a city of over 10,000,000, but the agglomeration Jabodetabek (Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangarang and Bekasi) contained over 30,000,000 in 2010.
~~~
The Portent
by Aedile Cwerbus
He gazed up to the heavens searching for some kind of sign,
an omen that could tell him when his future soon would shine.
He dreamed that Jupiter appeared above, like as a king,
protecting him, but also forcing him to do His thing.
But he would not ignore the sign, as did Caligula,
who was assassinated the next day malignantly.
Instead he offered up a cup to toast the mighty god,
and voiced his heartfelt gratitude he’d come unto his bod.
One must be wary of important portents when they come,
accepting them with openness, or end up as a bum.
To Somnus
by Aedile Cwerbus
What is the accusation, o, young god, what have I done,
that you deny me here, within despair and all alone,
at the edge of eternity, sweet peace, your treasure, Sleep,
that enters even prowling beasts, and centers, o, so deep?
the pleasant flowers, o, for hours, nodding to your depths;
it’s said that some times raging seas, their roars are formed and spent.
But why am I, like oceanic waves and heavy seas,
left here alone upon this lap of land in misery?
The moon in seven visits has seen me, my wild eyes,
awake and staring at the seven stars of morning’s rise.
The moon at twilight and at sunrise watches and awaits
the banishing, the vanishing, distress anticipates.
O, in compassion, spray thy dews from thy unwielding whip.
O, bring me strength and power to escape this whorling hip.
O, even Argus, thousand-eyed, allows his eyes to rest;
nerves taut, on guard relentlessly, I’m beaten by this test…
ah, staring, o, like couples interlocked, that shut you out,
from night-long ecstasies and raging seas of love and doubt.
So come to me and close my eyes. I issue no demands,
enfold my gaze with your sweet haze and smoothe me with your hands.
I beg your wand’s tip touches me, above me hovering,
and takes me to the end of all these wakes, recovering.
Aedile Cwerbus is a poet of ancient Rome. The latter poem draws inspiration from a poem by Statius (c. 45 – c. 96).
~~~
Big Bad Bear (#fugaperlaliberta)
by Uberde Ascweli
M49, a large, strong bear, climbed an electric fence
with seven cables carrying some 7,000 volts.
So dangerous, and dense, to overcome such jolts as that,
he took off to Trentino’s hills where he’d been stationed at.
So many people were amazed. M49 is tough.
It takes a genius to surmount a barrier so rough!
Perhaps he was the bear who had already taken out
domestic animals—some thirteen stalked, or there about.
But now he is back on the loose, and very hard to track.
Where is he now? One wonders when he will be coming back.
Andrea Camilleri (1925-2019)
by Uberdi Ascweli
Andrea Camilleri left the heat of Sicily,
and died in Rome in hospital at age of 93.
From a director, he went on to dialogues and death,
with dialect he knew from youth and time’s remembered breath.
Police Chief Salvo Montalbano will no longer irk;
th’ imaginary commisario is done with work.
Deaths needed solving with some logic, humour and some fight,
including searching for Luigi Pirandello’s life.
“Il cuoco dell’Alcyon” was his final Iliad;
he left one thousand unsolved cases, yes, a chiliad.
Uberdi Ascweli is a poet of Italy. Statius left unfinished his epic of a chiliad of lines, his Achilleid. One of Uberdi Ascweli favourite movies of all time is “Caccia alla volpe” with its admixture of neorealism and farce.
~~~
An Idle Idyll
by Esiad L. Werecub
They found themselves in morning’s beauty, shepherd and goatherd,
beneath the dappled oak trees and the chattering of birds.
The ground around was thick with shrubbery beneath the copse;
the air was filled with floral smells, cicadas, flies and wasps.
One hears the moan and groan of goat and sheep upon the lawn;
they are content to while away the hours of sweet dawn.
One almost could imagine Pan is piping in the shade,
and holds his wooden flute and plays a summer serenade,
while there nearby a woodland nymph reveals, o, lovely form
there pressing forth beside the ferns in dappled sun light warm.
Esiad L. Werecub is a poet of ancient Greece. In this poem, he is thinking of the poetry of Theocritus (fl. c. 270 BC), who, like Camilleri, was an inhabitant of Sicily.
~~~
Harold Scott McDonald Coxeter
by Euclidrew Base
In youth, he was a pianist, accomplished at age ten.
He felt that math and music were an interwoven den.
In 1933, he spent a year at Trinity
attending seminars of Wittgenstein’s philosophy.
In 1936 he moved to Canada for good;
Toronto then became his city and his neighbourhood.
He was an advocate of classical geometry,
against the major, favoured algebraic tendency.
He did his major work in polytopes, types: regular,
and high-dimensions—Harold Scott McDonald Coxeter.
Euclidrew Base is a poet of mathematics. “Donald” Coxeter (1907-2003) was a British-Canadian mathematician who focused on the theory of polytopes, nonEuclidean geometry, and projective geometry. Among those he inspired were Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher (1898-1972) and American architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983).
~~~
They Came
by Cesal Dwe Uribe
They came out by the thousands; they were running from their lands.
They could not get out fast enough. They came in roving bands.
They fled corruption, poverty, and dire circumstance.
They didn’t care what might occur. They hoped but for a chance.
They fled their suffering. They fled responsibilities.
They fled the gangs, the criminals, the crime and the disease.
They fled their lives. They fled their dreams. They fled their families.
They longed to flee so many things, o, even more than these.
They came out by the thousands, they were fleeing from the law,
and brought with them that as they came in by the thousands all.
Cesal Dwe Uribe is a poet of the Americas.
~~~
An American Idyll
by Caleb Wuri Seed
Who do these cows belong to, standing by discarded wood?
Who owns that sheep that’s grazing in the barely grassy mud?
Who owns this farm where all the trees are leafless, empty, bare,
like strange contortionists with grasping fingers grasping air.
What’s in those stony silos? Is there anything at all?
Their gray and white stone masonry ascends—cylindrical.
And what is in that white-roofed shed? Is it significant?
Has something ever happened in it that’s important stuff?
Beyond the largest trees one barely sees a tallish house.
Before those trees one sees a long and narrow trailer house.
Who’s in those structures? What have they been doing on this land?
What are they striving to attain? What do they understand?
Beyond the fence there are more structures that one also sees.
Who owns those structures, and that land? Can someone tell me, please?
The skies are pale blue with white and streaming, wind-blown clouds.
A dark gray jet flies overhead. O, is it very loud?
Is that why those beef cattle raise their heads and look straight out?
Is there somebody who’s been taking pictures from the town?
And if there is, does anybody know just who he is?
The emptiness is telling, the brown ground gratuitous.
The Farmer’s Pet
by Caleb Wuri Seed
He was a Midwest farmer, who always wore suspender straps.
He was just used to holding up his pants that way perhaps.
He never smiled; he was always very serious,
so sober that he never seemed to be delirious.
It seemed as if he did not want to talk to anyone,
especi’lly if the person was in front of him, or hung.
But there was one thing that he liked; it was a husky bitch.
A dog he saved, he found one day, left in a barren ditch.
He made that furry creature his companion, pet and help.
He had it ever close to him, and it would never yelp.
Caleb Wuri Seed is a poet of agriculture. One of his favourite tunes is “Turkey in the Straw”.
~~~
Homework
by Rudi E. Welec, “Abs”
He looked out on this city, seeing only buildings rise,
concrete and steel over streets, that jut into the skies.
Good morning, it is time to exercise his back a bit;
without equipment, target rhomboids, lumbars and the lats.
Reverse snow angels in the light, not going anywhere,
as if he’s flying there in place, the hands and arms in air.
Next, dolphin flips, not quite the kicks; up go the legs and feet;
but he is in the urban air, not in the ocean deep.
And then, upon cement square tiles, hands and feet outstretched;
it’s superman, the man of steel, doing reps and sets.
And finally, he stands up straight, and starts his hinge hip moves,
back, glutes and hamstrings, all engaged, in very groovy grooves.
Rudi E. Welec is a poet of exercise. Although he is into regular exercising now, in his youth his worst grades in high school were in PE. When in a college PE class, at grade time, he told his instructor he had lied about some data, or other, he had given him. The professor was so impressed he told the truth, he changed his quarter grade up to an A—perhaps the only time he got an A in PE.
~~~
The Study
by Erisbawdle Cue
He knelt down at the fount of knowledge, drinking up a lot.
He loved to open up to gain new penetrating thought.
He opened up new files, sites, and even hard bound books.
The study was, without a doubt, his favourite of nooks.
He loved a brand new challenge learning what he did not know,
and striving to attain new heights, to rise up from the low,
to reach down deep into his reservoirs of strength to find
new winding avenues within the cities of his mind.
O, ecstasy it is to learn new things not understood,
for wonders no one knew that are both beautiful and good.
Erisbawdle Cue is a poet of thought.
~~~
Shine, Perishing Republic II
by Cal Wes Ubideer
While this America is settling in vulgarity
into the wretched rhetoric, throughout it, thickening,
and mad, protesting masses SCREAM on social media
outrageous claims, in hate-filled rants, of vile expedience,
volcanic shifts in thoughtless rifts spew lava-tory flames
into the blogosphere for corporation hunger-games,
shine, perishing republic, in the face of goolag camps,
where AI birds are twittering away on insta-amps,
and cities lie within this monster’s grip, remember that,
there are the mountains where true freedom can be found, in fact.
Cal Wes Ubideer is a poet of California, which he both loves and hates.
~~~
Wake Up: July 19, 2019
by Cadwel E. Bruise
“…breaks like the Atlantic Ocean on my head.”
—Robert Lowell, “Man and Wife”
This morning I woke up in darkness, wholly unaware.
I fell off of the bed. I crashed, and bashed my head right there
on the hard edge of the night stand. O, damn, that hurt like hell,
so totally disorienting that I could not tell.
I needed to turn on a light. I could not see a thing.
I searched to find a light. Where was I? What was happening?
So crazy—I began to worry for my sanity,
the discombobulation, o, and the humanity.
I went to the refrigerator to get an ice pack,
but all I had was North Atlantic sea-scal-lops—nice smack!
Cadwel E. Bruise is a poet of New England.
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